Nearly
four years to the day when BP oil began soiling our beaches, a
1,000-pound tar mat is being cleaned up on Fort Pickens beach. (Pensacola News Journal)

A
U.S. Coast Guard pollution investigation team is leading another day of
cleanup of a tar mat discovered Friday on the beach at Fort Pickens.
So
far, the team has removed about 960 pounds of the mat, which is about 8
to 10 feet off the shoreline in the Gulf of Mexico, just east of
Langdon Beach, Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy said
Mats are made of weathered oil, sand, water and shells.
Monday
marks the fourth anniversary of when the oil from the April 2010
Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster finally arrived on waves slicking
our beaches. Tar balls and a frothy brownish-orange petroleum product
called mousse, however, arrived earlier that month.
The mat was
discovered on Friday by a Florida Department of Environmental Protection
monitor who surveys area beaches routinely looking for lingering BP
oil.
"The weather plays such a big factor in this," said Murphy.
"Friday we got the cleanup crew out there and could see it (tar mat)
visibly and attacked it. Then the thunderstorms came in, and they had to
stop."
By the time the crew returned Saturday, the mat was
reburied under 6 inches of sand, and it took the crew a while to
relocate it using GPS coordinates taken Friday, she said.
With the mat located in the surf zone, it's harder to clean up.
"It's always a battle with Mother Nature," Murphy said.
The
team returned today and plans to return Monday and for as many days as
it takes to excavate the entire mat with shovels, although Murphy said
it appears by the smaller amount excavated today they may be getting
close to collecting all of it.
But the team will survey about 100 yards east and west of the mat to make sure none is still buried in the sand.
This mat is located about half a mile east of where a mat containing 1,400 pounds of weathered oil was cleaned up in March.
Cleanup
is being conducted by a joint effort between BP, the Coast Guard,
Florida Department of Environmental Protection and National Park
Service.
It will take about a week for test results to confirm whether the oil is from the Macondo well that exploded April 20, 2004.
More
than 200 million gallons of crude oil spewed into Gulf in 2010 for a
total of 87 days before the Macondo well head could capped, making it
the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.
Ironically, the discovery
of the near-shore mat comes at a time when the National Park Service has
stepped up efforts to search out suspected tar mats farther offshore.
Mats are believed to be submerged in the Gulf of Mexico waters off the seashore's Fort Pickens and Johnson beach areas.
Since
April, a specialized team of underwater archaeologists has been
scanning the waters looking for areas that might have trapped oil when
it began washing up on our beaches four years ago on Monday.
Friday's
discovery is not related to the dive team's hunt for oil, although the
Coast Guard is testing several samples the team discovered to see if it
is oil and, if so, whether it's from the ­Macondo well, she said.
Murphy
urges the public to report any tar mat, tar ball or anything they
suspected BP oil to the National Response Center hotline.Report tar balls
Report tar ball, tar mats or anything that looks like oil pollution to the National Response Center hotline 800-424-8802.

Who is BP Slick

John L. Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper, located in Tuscaloosa County Alabama. I am the enforcement and advocacy branch of the Friends of Hurricane Creek.
Photographer / videographer, I have dedicated my life to exposing the truth about pollution and lack of accountability by the industries and agencies who use our waterways as waste conduits.